Secularization revisited – teaching of religion and the state of denmark

Reeh, Secularization Revisited – Teaching of Religion and the State of Denmark, Boundaries of Religious Freedom: Regulating Religion in Diverse Societies 5, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-39608

Boundaries of Religious Freedom:

Regulating Religion in Diverse Societies 5

Boundaries of Religious Freedom:

Regulating Religion in Diverse Societies

Volume 5

Series Editors

Lori G Beaman , University of Ottawa , ON, Canada

Anna Halafoff , Deakin University , Vic, Australia

Lene Kühle , Aarhus Universitet , Denmark

diverse societies In addition, religion is occupying a more prominent place in the public sphere at the turn of the 21st Century, despite predictions of religious decline The rise in religious diversity, and in the salience of religious identity, is posing both challenges and opportunities pertaining to issues of governance Indeed, a series of tensions have arisen between state and religious actors regarding a variety of matters including burial rites, religious education and gender equality Many of these debates have focused on the need for, and limits of, religious freedom especially in situations where certain religious practices risk impinging upon the freedom of others Moreover, different responses to religious pluralism are often informed by the relationship between religion and state in each society Due to the changing nature of societies, most have needed to defi ne, or redefi ne, the boundaries of religious freedom refl ected in laws, policies and the design and use of public spaces These boundaries, however, continue to be contested, debated and reviewed, at local, national and global levels of governance

All books published in this Series have been fully peer-reviewed before fi nal acceptance

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11839

Niels Reeh

Secularization Revisited – Teaching of Religion and the State of Denmark

1721–2006

ISSN 2214-5281 ISSN 2214-529X (electronic)

Boundaries of Religious Freedom: Regulating Religion in Diverse Societies

ISBN 978-3-319-39606-4 ISBN 978-3-319-39608-8 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-39608-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016947714

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016

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Department of History

University of Southern Denmark

Odense , Denmark

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 The State, External Relations and Internal Organization 6

1.2 Disclaimers and Remarks on the Limitations of the Perspective 10

References 11

Part I Theory

2 The Blind Spots of the Dominant Secularization Theories 17

2.1 From Secularizatio to Secularization 18

2.2 Comte’s Framing of Sociology and Break with the Natural Law Tradition 19

2.3 Consequences of Emile Durkheim’s Foundation of the Discipline of Sociology 21

2.4 The German Approach to Sociology and Talcott Parson’s Transformation of Max Weber’s Sociology 22

2.5 Consequences of the Concept of Differentiation 25

2.6 The Implicit Notion of Religion in the Concept of Differentiation 26

2.7 On the Absence of War in Sociology 27

2.8 Blind Spots of Classic Secularization Theories 28

References 30

3 A New Theoretical Approach to Religion 33

3.1 Introduction 33

3.2 Towards a New Theory of Religion 34

3.3 Preliminary Remarks to a Relational Notion of Religion 35

3.4 Norbert Elias’ ‘Survival Unit’ and ‘the Extended “I-and-We” Consciousness’ 37

3.5 Towards a Sociology of the Social ‘We’ as a Relational Category 38

3.6 On the Relations Between Religions 39

3.7 Mimicking, Imitation, and Copying in Social Life: A Modifi cation of the Confl ict Perspective 41

3.8 On the Historical Development of the Split Between the Survival Unit and Religious Entities 42

3.9 The Field of the Religious Survival Units as a Point of Departure in Defi ning Religion 46

3.10 Counter-Religions in the Present Field of Religions 48

3.11 Myth and Ritual 52

3.12 A Short Note on the Distinction Between Religion and Science 53

3.13 Three Kinds of Survival Units 54

3.14 The Call of the State: Civil Religion or Nationalism as the ‘Religion’ of the Danish Survival Unit 56

3.15 Contested Myths and Life Histories of the US and Denmark 56

3.16 The Myth and Life History of the Danish Church in Its Liturgical Year 60

3.17 On the State, Group, and Individual 61

3.18 Concluding Theoretical Remarks 62

References 63

4 Further Implications of the Relational Approach to the Study of Religion 67

4.1 Historical Differentiation of Religious and Sovereign Survival Units 67

4.2 Miracles as a Discursive Weapon in the Religious Struggle 69

4.3 State Agency Elsewhere Than Denmark: The Glorious Revolution in England and Beyond 71

References 76

Part II The Danish Road through Modernity – Transformations of the Sacred Canopy in Danish Schools from 1721–2006

5 Despotic Absolutism: 1721–1784 81

5.1 The Teaching and Politics of Religion from 1721 to 1784 82

5.2 State Mythology—A Christian State Under a Christian King 83

5.3 Historical Background—The Wars Against Sweden 1657–1660 83

5.4 The Absolutist State After 1660 84

5.5 The Military and Compulsory Schooling 85

5.6 The Re-Established Country Militia of 1701 85

5.7 The Establishment of the Equestrian Schools 86

5.8 Education, State, and Individual 88

5.9 The Law of Adscription of 1733 and What Followed 89

5.10 The 1736 Statute Regarding Confi rmation 90

5.11 The Use of Religion Under Early Absolutism in Denmark 92

5.12 Arguments Concerning the Law of 1739 92

5.13 The School Law of 1739 94

5.14 Instructions for the Schoolmaster 94

5.15 The School Law of 1740 and the Retreat of the State 95

5.16 The Sacred Canopy Under Despotic Absolutism, 1721–1784 96

References 97

6 Enlightened Absolutism: 1784 to 1849 99

6.1 Towards the Elementary School Reforms of 1806 and 1814 99

6.2 The Military and Economic Situation of the Danish Crown 99

6.3 Peasantry and Power Relations Within the Danish State 101

6.4 The Small and the Great Land Commissions 102

6.5 The Great Agrarian Reforms and the School Reforms of 1814 103

6.6 The School Act of 1814 – Education, the State, and the Individual 104

6.7 School Discipline 104

6.8 The Curriculum and the Supervisory System of the Law of 1814 105

6.9 The Schoolmaster – Betwixt and Between 106

6.10 The Sacred Canopy Under Enlightened Absolutism, 1784 to 1814 108

References 110

7 Constitutional Monarchy: 1849–1901 111

7.1 Towards 1849 111

7.2 A New State-Form 112

7.3 Schooling and the Act Concerning Marriage 1851 114

7.4 The Organization of the Church and Education Departments 115

7.5 The Act Concerning Local Administration of 1855 117

7.6 The Free Schools Act ( Friskoler ) of May 2, 1855 118

7.7 An Overview of the Period from 1849 to 1864 119

7.8 From 1864 to 1901 120

7.9 The Circular of H.V Sthyr 121

7.10 Transformation of the Sacred Canopy Under Constitutional Monarchy, 1849–1901 122

References 123

Contents

8 Parliamentary Democracy: 1901–1945 125

8.1 The Push for Democratization 125

8.2 Society as Defence of the State 126

8.3 The Act of 1904 129

8.4 The Battle Over Christianity in Schools in 1930s 129

8.5 The Act of 1933 130

8.6 The Positions of the Four Political Parties in 1933 131

8.7 Important Aspects of the Act of 1933 134

8.8 Denmark for the People—The Turnaround of the Social Democrats 134

8.9 The Act of 1937 136

8.10 World War II—An Exception? 137

8.11 The Sacred Canopy Under Parliamentary Democracy and the Nazi Occupation, 1901–1945 138

References 140

9 The Welfare State: 1945 to 1989 143

9.1 Beneath the ‘Nuclear Umbrella’ 143

9.2 The Act of 1949 and the Positions in the Debate 144

9.3 The Blue Consideration 1960 145

9.4 Towards the Schools Act of 1975 145

9.5 The Debate on Political Indoctrination 147

9.6 The Act of 1975 148

9.7 The Right of Exemption 149

9.8 Intellectual Liberty as Ideological Defence 149

9.9 The External Environment from 1975 to the End of the Cold War 150

9.10 The Internal Situation from 1975 to the End of the Cold War 151

9.11 Globalisation and Guidelines for the Teaching of Christianity 152

9.11.1 The Sacred Canopy Under the Welfare State, 1945 to 1989 154

References 155

10 The Public Management State: 1989 to 2006 157

10.1 The External Situation of Denmark in 1989 Until 2001 157

10.2 Legislation Pertaining to the Teaching of Christianity from 1993 Until 2001 160

10.3 On the Importance of Culture (Including Christianity) in a Shrinking World 162

10.4 The New Public Management State, the War on Terror, and the Cartoon Crisis 163

10.4.1 Externally: Towards September 11, 2001 163

10.4.2 Internally: Towards the So-Called Change of Systems in 2001 164

10.4.3 The Governments of Anders Fogh Rasmussen 167 10.4.4 Common Goals 168 10.4.5 The Teaching of Christianity According

to Common Goals 169 10.4.6 Farewell to the Welfare State? 170 10.4.7 The Cartoon Crisis, the Teaching of Democracy,

and Leviathan 172 10.5 The Sacred Canopy Under the Public Management State,

1989 to 2007 174 References 176

11 Overview of the State Religious Politics in the Danish

Elementary Schools from 1721 to 2005 179

11.1 Conclusion to the Case Study 183 References 187

Part III Conclusion

12 Conclusion 191

References 198

Index 201

Contents

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016

N Reeh, Secularization Revisited – Teaching of Religion and the State of

Denmark, Boundaries of Religious Freedom: Regulating Religion in Diverse

Societies 5, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-39608-8_1

Introduction

As has often been said, the theories of secularization constituted a paradigm and reigning dogma of the sociology of the 1960s and 1970s ( Tschannen 1991 ; Swatos and Christiano 1999 ) Many sociologists subscribed to Anthony Wallace’s state-ment, ‘The future of religion is extinction.’ Since the end of the Cold War and espe-cially in the period after September 11, 2001 , the roles have been reversed; now one might say that religion is here to stay while the future of secularization theory may

be extinction, failure, or, at least, reformulation ( Berger 1999 ; Stark 1999 ; Reeh

2009b ) Religion has mounted the stage again and to a degree that would have been unfathomable, for instance, in the 1980s

Instead of proceeding by attempting to establish new theories of post- secularization or similar concepts and rapidly abandoning thought about seculariza-tion, this failure should be examined in depth by historical-sociological study ( Finke and Stark 1992 ; Gorski and Altinordu 2008 ) Therefore, this book is an attempt to answer the questions of how, why, and where did the once dominant theories of secularization go wrong? These questions are not directed to any individual sociolo-gist but rather to the conceptual framework of sociology The assumption of the book is that answers to this set of questions can be obtained through a conceptual analysis of the dominant secularization paradigm ( Tschannen 1991 ) as it was con-structed by the leading sociological fathers and the reception hereof Hopefully, a thorough examination of the failure of secularization theories can lead to signifi cant discussions in the fi eld of sociology

Broadly speaking, the conceptual analysis points out that the establishment of sociology, especially in Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim ’s case, was created through a complete empiricist break with the natural law tradition Through empiri-cism , earlier writers such as Thomas Hobbes, who had paid great attention to the state, were dismissed completely Sociology as well as international relations thus emerged as independent disciplines with little relation with each other In the case

of sociology, empiricism contributed to establishing sociology as an independent and self-suffi cient discipline concerned with society and, rarely, with the state In

addition, the dominant master concept of sociology, namely the society, was built on

an organic metaphor and, as a consequence, the dominant sociological thinking, including secularization theories, established an analytical framework in which reli-gion in the singular was studied as a substantial entity In other words, in this analy-sis, there only seems to be religion within a society of which there could be more or less The consequence hereof was that the secularization paradigm did not include two or more religions that could relate to each other This is not to say that sociolo-gists have not paid attention to religious diversity (Beaman et al 2008 ; Beckford

2010 ), but the argument here is that the secularization theories have not reckoned with the interreligious dynamic , as pointed to by, for instance, Roger Finke and Rodney Stark ( Finke 1990 ; Finke and Stark 1992 )

The conceptual analysis suggests that the study of secularization might benefi t if much more attention were paid to the fundamental conceptual framework, espe-cially the agency of the state, and interreligious agency In some ways, the present work can be viewed as parallel to the work of especially Roger Finke ( Finke 1990 ; Finke and Stark 1992 ) in particular as well as the more recent work of Daphne Halikiopoulou ( 2011 )

Although the case study might have been carried out without questioning the academic notion of religion, the conceptual analysis suggests that theories of secu-larization or historical religious change could benefi t from including an analysis of interreligious dynamics The conceptual analysis is therefore followed by an attempt

to establish an outline of a new relational theory of religion that may overcome some of these shortcomings The motivation behind this attempt is that the existing defi nitions of religion do not provide a satisfactory answer to the question of why the Danish state has kept such a close watch on the religion of its subjects/ citizens

A central point of departure in the proposed relational theory of religion is two theories of state agency, namely, Norbert Elias and Thomas Højrup ( Elias 1980 ; Højrup 2003 ) In Elias, the state is regarded as a ‘ survival unit’ ; in Højrup, the state

is conceptualized as a ‘state subject’ Because Norbert Elias is better known to an international audience, his notion of the survival unit is generally preferred over Thomas Højrup’s state subject Following Elias, I suggest that religions can be fruit-fully conceptualized as a specifi c historical type of survival unit, which I refer to as a religious survival unit I thus propose to analyse religions as religious survival units that are embedded in a fi eld of other religions in which a struggle for existence is played out The established relational concept of religion suggests the existence of a

fi eld of religions that are the result of collective intentionality can be observed in speech acts as described by the American philosopher John Searle ( 1995 ) This col-lective intentionality and its consequential collective consciousness is here regarded

as a specifi c historic type of collective consciousness that results in social tions, which are constituted through distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ The exis-tence of a relational fi eld of religions as collective constructions further suggests that secularization theories have not covered the entire fi eld of religions because Atheism and Humanism are new participants in the struggle in the fi eld of religions To make this argument, a small case study of the recent rise of organized Atheism and Humanism in Denmark since 2001 is included From the outcome of the analysis, it

construc-1 Introduction

is argued that the new organized Atheism and Humanism (1) relate to religions in the same way as other religions and (2) through the establishment of rituals for name-giving, confi rmation , weddings, and funerals, have mirrored signifi cant religious oth-ers, namely the Danish National Church On this basis, it is suggested that Atheism and Humanism should be studied as counter-religions and are indeed part of the fi eld

of religions; they should accordingly be reckoned with by studies of secularization that might benefi t by being reframed as studies of historical religious change The existing defi nitions of religion have thus been overly dependent on everyday notions

of religion, having been shaped by the major religious traditions in Europe that have used Atheism as an ‘other’ category in order to limit the fi eld of religions in a particu-lar way according to their own interests

The conceptual analysis is followed by a historical case study of secularization

of a specifi c European case, which some scholars now regard as an exception that has to be explained instead of the normal path through modernization ( Berger et al

2008 ) In the scholarly literature on secularization, the difference between the US and Europe has often been noted but not suffi ciently thoroughly analysed This lacuna is a problem because it conceals the fact that some European states have used

the teaching of religion in an active construction of a Sacred Canopy that has not

been constitutionally possible in the US The perspective in the case study sets itself apart from the overwhelming majority of sociological works but can be viewed as related to the recent study of Daphne Halikiopoulou, the historical studies of Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, and to the various attempts to bring the state (back) in ( Finke 1990 ; Finke and Stark 1992 ; Halikiopoulou 2011 ; Giddens 1985 ; Skocpol

1985 ; Tilly 1990 ; Kaspersen 2004 ) Although these exceptions as well as others do exist, state agency has not been a signifi cant part of mainstream sociological tradi-tion, especially the dominant secularization theories or the secularization paradigm,

as Olivier Tschannen termed it ( Berger 1969; Luckmann 1974 ; Wilson 1976 ; Tschannen 1991 ; Casanova 1994 , 2007; Davie 1994 ; Bruce 2002 ; Dobbelaere

2002) It should, however, be stressed that, for instance, Karel Dobbelaere’s

Secularization: An Analysis at Three Levels and David Martin’s A General Theory

of Secularization can be read as historical descriptions that to some extent are

dependent on or refl ections of the actions of the state However, this does not affect the main point, namely, that these studies do not view the actions of the state as dependent on its external environment ( Martin 1978 ; Dobbelaere 2002 )

The same disregard of state agency also applies to more specialized studies of Danish school and educational history, which have tended to pay less attention to the defence aspects of their subject than this book It may, of course, be argued that this is not a new perspective since the discipline of history has perhaps always been focussed on the state as a driving force of events However, within the human sci-ences (including history), the tendency towards disciplinary specialization has also resulted in specialization, or narrowing of the horizon, of the questions asked in the interpretation of material, including decisions as to what is relevant and what is not For instance, school and church historians have overlooked the fact that the military and defence considerations of the Danish state played a decisive role in the

poli-establishment of Christianity as the mandatory religion in the Roman Empire to the

establishment of democracy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, that the lation in Europe was generally forced to recognize the offi cially sanctioned and Christian Sacred Canopy on the collective and individual levels The enforcement of mandatory religious confession took different forms across Europe In Catholic areas, both princes and the Roman Catholic Church worried about the spread of Protestantism in their territories and, consequently, schools and religious teaching became important (Strakosch-Grassmann 1905 ; Wienecke 1913; Melton 1988 ; Furet and Ozouf 1982 ; Loserth 1916 ) The same tendency is visible in Protestant domains An example hereof is the link between confi rmation and military recruit-ment in Prussia where it can be observed that peasants were drafted through the so-called canton system established in 1733 The situation in Prussia is more com-plicated than in Denmark because the ruling house of the Hohenzollerns converted

popu-to Calvinism in 1613 and continued popu-to rule over Lutheran as well as Catholic areas However, this does not mean that religion and its teaching was unimportant to the Prussian state In 1717, the Prussian state initiated a school project for the peasants

of the royal domains, which seems to have infl uenced the Danish king in his lishment of equestrian schools in 1721 Teaching religion and confi rmation also seem to have been important to the Prussian state since confi rmation was used administratively in the establishment of mandatory conscription (the canton sys-tem); from 1730, Prussian peasants were enrolled by priests after their religious confi rmation The importance of confi rmation in Denmark as well as Prussia was because specifi c religious teachings were a prerequisite for swearing a binding oath

estab-to the king Confi rmation was an administrative and a disciplinary measure nected to the struggle for survival of the Prussian state, which was described by contemporaries not as a state with an army but as an army with a state as approxi-mately 70 % of the state’s income was spent on the military In Prussia, the Council

con-of War and Domain was to supervise the regulation con-of Catholic and Lutheran schools (Cubberley 1920, 473) In Northern Europe then, it should be noted that the Protestant princes were struggling with each other as well as with their Orthodox (Russia) and Catholic ( Austria and France ) counterparts and that they constantly strove to optimize the strength of their armies 1 In the Danish case, this optimization included mandatory schooling ( teaching of religion) that was established only in the areas from which peasants were drafted to the army Schooling in Denmark ended

1 For an analysis of the rise of educational systems in Europe that includes competition but not the military struggle between states, see Ramirez and Boli 1987 2–17

1 Introduction

in mandatory confi rmation that included an oath to bind the peasant to absolute obedience to the Danish King in peace as well as war

A main argument of the book is that theories of secularization have overlooked the way the Sacred Canopy of European states was linked to the struggle for sur-vival in the European state system Instead of taking this struggle into account, theo-ries of secularization assume that the Sacred Canopy was simply already in existence before modernity The present book asks the questions: What were the precondi-tions for the mandatory Sacred Canopy in Denmark? Was it the change in these preconditions that led to a decisive historical change in the way the Danish state used religion?

Consequently, the narrative of secularization should be revisited on the macro- level by historical studies because the Danish case suggests that European states may have had a far stronger hand in the construction and regulation of the religion

of their inhabitants prior to the introduction of democracy A second signifi cant

fi nding is that this case study demonstrates the Danish state became less interested

in the teaching of religion during the Enlightenment It thus began to rely more on patriotism (and later nationalism ) as a means of making peasants fi ght for the Danish state; patriotism and a mild enlightened absolutism were perceived as a more effi -cient social contract than the religiously based coercion of despotic absolutism ( Reventlow 1787 , 37)

A third key fi nding of the study is that the Danish state retained the possibility of pursuing an active state religious policy through the teaching of religion after the establishment of democracy in 1849 and that it revived this possibility during two periods, namely, during World War II and after the events of September 11 in 2001 Under Nazi occupation during World War II , the case study reveals that the teaching

of religion was formulated as antithetical to Nazism and that it seems to have been used as an attempt to prevent the Nazifi cation of Danish youth Further, after 2001, the case study shows that the teaching of religion was used as a means to combat religious fundamentalism (radical Islam ) and terrorism The Danish state has thus retained the possibility of infl uencing the religion of its inhabitants in contemporary contexts This should be recalled in discussions of secularization because this con-stitutional particularity sets Denmark apart from, for instance, the US , which is constitutionally barred from this option It is noteworthy that while the Danish state has retained the possibility of pursuing a state religious policy in public schools, this does not necessarily mean that teaching religion necessarily affects the religion of citizens However, the existence of state teaching of religion has the possibility of becoming the object of political discussion, which may add a different component

to the political religious discourse compared with countries (e.g., the US ) were this option does not exist

1.1 The State, External Relations and Internal Organization

In the perspective on the state that has gradually emerged, the internal life of the Danish state has been vitally dependent on its external relations Therefore, it has been analytically fruitful to regard the interstate relationship as competitive or, more precisely, as a struggle for mutual recognition For this viewpoint, I am indebted to Thomas Højrup at the University of Copenhagen and his Circle of Structural Dialectics ( Højrup 2002 , 2003 ) Following this approach, the interstate relationship has been understood theoretically through Carl von Clausewitz ’ concept of war and G.W.F Hegel’s concept of mutual recognition The Danish state has been regarded

as a survival unit among other survival units In this struggle for survival, the state must seek to optimize its resources, including its inhabitants and their willingness

to answer the call of the state From the perspective of this book, potential war and competition between states are crucial and have deep implications for cultural and social history

In its purest and most abstract form the state must be understood as the recognition by other

states [that one is] a complete member of a system of states, a recognition that is always precarious and temporary … Recognition is, also in Hegelian thought, recognition of the capability of the state to defend itself, to compel respect ( Boserup 1986 , 924)

The essential feature of this approach is, then, that the state is forged through the struggle for recognition against other states In this case, the state is not regarded as brought together by a fusion of its internal elements through the notion of solidarity

as it would be in a Durkheimian world; instead, it is the external pressure exerted by its neighbours that conditions the state This is the fi ssion perspective on the state and is called this because it stresses that the state generally harbours different inter-ests, groups, and forces that would tend to separate if there were no external pres-sure However, it is important to stress that once the state is constituted as a survival unit, a power struggle over control of the state can be played out between different and different groups with different interests, strategies, etc These different groups may seek to fashion the state differently within the limits laid out by the state’s survival

In this light, a state can be defi ned as a political organization capable of ing other states from intervening in its domain For this reason, it is recognized as a state with a domain by other states ( Kaspersen 2002 , 2004 ) From this vantage point, the state can be analysed as a relational actor in the state system—always bearing in mind that any independent and sovereign organization that can prevent other organizations from intervening in its domain will qualify as being defi ned as

prevent-a stprevent-ate

The state here is not defi ned in terms of its monopoly of violence within its ritory ( Weber 1965 ) Rather, the state is a defensive unit, seeing its own survival as its primary goal It comprises the people who participate in the formation of politi-cal will, which is recognized by other states In Denmark after 1660, the state was absolutist The king was a prince of God’s mercy and had absolute power; he (and his council) was the state From the last part of the eighteenth century, the absolutist

ter-1 Introduction

Danish state changed into what has been called opinion-driven absolutism The king came to increasingly depend on the professional and administrative elites He was portrayed as a loving father, who listened to his subjects and then made the decision that was supposed to be best for all The state can at this point in history be under-stood as the king and the administrative elite In 1849, the state changed again; the monarchy was restricted and voting was introduced The king, the government, and the electorate were now the state A consequence of the democratic constitution was

an initial wave of democratization , which is evident from the political debates of the period In 1866, the constitution was modifi ed in the wake of the defeat of 1864 This changed the electorate and thus the state Large landowners were now afforded much greater political weight In 1901, parliamentarianism was introduced and the king thereafter appointed only governments without an opposing a majority in the Lower Chamber

1901 saw a second tide of democratization begin to rise in Denmark The ate was gradually expanded, and women obtained suffrage in 1915 In 1953, the Upper Chamber was abolished At that point, the Danish state comprised the gov-ernment and all Danish citizens over 18 years of age The share that all citizens have

elector-in the state explaelector-ins the fact that elector-individual Danes, like citizens elector-in other democratic countries, readily adopt a state perspective The adoption of a state perspective can

be observed, for instance, in daily political discourse in which there is an abundant use of the personal pronoun ‘we’ We have to do this or that in order to keep our competitiveness vis-à-vis the Germans, the Chinese, etc Such use of language shows that people in the situation understand themselves to be part of this ‘we’ (Reeh 2009a ) Norbert Elias’s notion of the survival unit further explains why peo-ple are emotionally attached to ‘their’ state ( Elias 1978 ) Clearly, in addition to its external relations, the state has a relationship with its own society, or the inhabitants

of the country, through its state-form In the present study, the state-form is stood not only as the organization of the state but also as the history of the state, or the state mythology ( Assmann 1997 ; Reeh 2009a ) The state-form is often expressed

under-in the offi cial conceptualization of the state although it is almost always contested

It is certainly not a given and has often changed through time

This perspective on the state has numerous consequences The state and its nal relations become a primary focus The struggle between states cannot be over-looked since the state tends to use whatever means at hand to protract its struggle for existence The state organizes itself in such a way that, at the least, suffi cient defence

exter-is obtained Here, defence policies become a broad category The internal tion of a state is itself a means of securing the state and its survival since the state must organize itself to maintain its signifi cance in regard to other states In this light, society is no longer an entity that can be studied independently of the state On the contrary, the organization of society is highly dependent on the state and its struggle for survival The invisible and visible confl ict between states becomes an indispens-able point of departure for the study of any society related to a state This view is adopted here One of the measures to which the Danish state has from time to time resorted is religion Threatened from outside its borders, the state turns to its resources within The less people will or can comply with the measures proposed—

higher taxes, fi xed grain prices, conscription—in short, the will of the state, the less effectively the state can function A state thus has to call on its subjects if it is to retain its sovereignty and legitimacy, internally as well as externally A state has, one might say, a voice that speaks through legislation among other things This call plays a central role since the politics of school and religion can be regarded as such

a call upon the inhabitants of the state

However, since it is concerned with the agency of the state in the particular area

of teaching of religion, individual subjects are not at the centre of the present sis Here I accordingly analyse one of the channels, namely, the elementary school system, through which the state offi cially attempts to defi ne the status and position

analy-of its subjects in relation to itself It must be stressed that the attempt analy-of the state is only an attempt and that it may have no or unintentional consequences If, however, self-organization and the call of the state are to work, the state must pay attention to the culture, the religion, and the history of itself and its subjects; otherwise, the call falls on deaf ears or can be opposed According to the Danish confi rmation ritual of

1736, each individual was defi ned and recognized as a member of the king’s church militant whereas in 1975, each pupil in a school was recognized as a future citizen free to choose his or her own confession Throughout history, the state-form and the state’s use of religion have been contested and have changed dramatically The state

thus resembles a bricoleur that uses whatever is at hand The things at hand are a

very broad category, ranging from the state-form itself, military weapons, and nomic resources to ideas, concepts, and beliefs Such ideas and beliefs may derive from the subjects of the state, from history, or from elsewhere In this way, the cul-tural and religious life of Danes has been used not only as a resource but also as a reserve that the state has sought to husband In the analysis, state policy on religion

eco-in elementary schools is viewed from this perspective Nevertheless, it should be stressed that even though states struggle and compete against each other, they may also attempt to copy, imitate, and learn from each other as well as achieve goals that

do not spring from the interstate relation as suggested in the section on mimicking , imitation, and copying in social life in Chap 2 In this study, the fi nding is that state policies on religion in Danish schools have been crucially dependent and infl uenced

by the dynamic springing from the relation to other states

In the case study, the analysis is viewed strictly from the perspective of the Danish state In the fi eld of the academic study of religion, it has proven diffi cult to reach a consensus concerning the defi nition of religion However, religion and Christianity have been a weighty problem for the Danish state to handle, regardless

of the academic problems in defi ning religion (Hervieu-Léger 2000 ) This study does, however, have the potential to shed some light on what religion has meant for the Danish state and why it has been important to ‘handle’ it The study accordingly provides an opportunity for analysis of the potential forces behind the construction

of the modern concept of religion, namely, the modern state

In addition to the sociological secularization paradigm, certain studies of larization by historians deserve mention The most important here are Callum

Brown ’s The Death of Christian Britain and Hugh McLeod ’ Secularisation in

Western Europe, 1848–1914 ( McLeod 2000 ; Brown 2001 ; McLeod et al 2010 )

1 Introduction

Brown’s work is more oriented towards secularization on the individual level and not on the level of state agency, which is the subject of this book One of the main

fi ndings in this work is that secularization in Britain has taken place since the 1960s

It seems likely that his fi nding could be replicated in a Danish context In some respects, the present book may thus be seen as bearing some resemblance to Hugh

McLeod’s Secularisation in Western Europe, 1848–1914 As in McLeod’s

impor-tant work, the secularization process is not seen here as the inevitable result of an abstract process of modernization ( McLeod 2000 , 28) In addition, Hugh McLeod also deals with secularization on the state level as well as the institutional level However, in McLeod’s book, the agency in history is found in the individual agent

or person whereas the present book uses the socially constructed collective ‘we’ that

is an integral part of Elias concept of the survival unit Following this, the neutic horizon of the present book is focusing the analysis on the state as a survival unit in a world of other survival units with which the state must keep up if it is to survive On one hand, the present book then lies open to McLeod’s critique of socio-logical studies as being centred on ‘one master factor’ as it could be argued that the present study puts tremendous weight on the state and its struggle for survival ( McLeod 2000 , 10) On the other hand, I argue that this book’s focus on the state and its struggle with other states is justifi ed in that this is shown to be a crucial factor whose infl uence varies in different historical contexts Further, I argue that this book complements McLeod’s analysis A prominent example is that both McLeod and I argue that pluralism was a crucial factor in the process of secularization, or histori-cal religious change , as I prefer to call it In McLeod, pluralism was the outcome of internal power struggles in England , France, and the German Empire In the Danish context, I argue that pluralism in the form of the introduction of democracy in Denmark was the outcome of the realization of the cruel fact that the Danish abso-lutist state had become a small state that could not defend itself vis-à- vis Prussia In order to procure a stronger defence, the king introduced general conscription of all male citizens in 1848 and constitutional monarchy in 1849 The consequence was that the Danish state then belonged to both the king and the electorate This fi nding

herme-is not contradictory to McLeod’s but can be seen as a structural cause that underlies and thus determines the frame for power struggles in Denmark in the years before the introduction of constitutional monarchy in 1849 Hopefully, this study offers a suggestion for other historians or historical sociologists to look for links between the external and internal affairs of other states Further, recent research on the Glorious Revolution in England mentioned in Chap 3 suggests the link between the external and internal affairs of the state is not limited to Denmark

As is the case with any viewpoint, the present study and its design have tions The sole concern here is with the changes, which derive from the political process that affected religion in the schools Therefore, the analytical strategy has accordingly been to closely attend to the political process at the expense of the con-tent of educational materials It would certainly have been profi table to include the omitted material, but the time span covered is long and the political archive is vast

limita-A politician once remarked that when the teaching of Christianity is under sion, speeches are twice as long as in other instances In addition to this the material from the absolutist period, other sources in Gothic handwriting have been well hid-den in a variety of places in The Royal Danish Archive in Copenhagen It was thus necessary to make a choice, which was to focus on sources on the political process Another consequence of the design of the work is that it is not concerned with reli-gion at the individual level Furthermore, religious culture in general was not assim-ilated into the analysis, except when it is mentioned in the political decisions This top-down perspective has a wide and well-known blind spot as it examines only a part of historical reality Nonetheless, this part of historical reality is as indispens-able as any other and deserves a thorough empirical investigation

It should be added that the gravest problem might be that the singular focus on the political archive offers no guarantee that the analysis can capture the motives behind any political decision Far from all political statements are justifi ed in public with real reasons A related problem is the fact that opinions can be shared to such

an extent that they are commonplace among those involved in making decisions and are thus not explicitly expressed and are as silent in the record as the closest secret

of state

Finally, perhaps historians especially should be warned This is not a traditional historical study The political process is analysed with the explicit aim of using the analysis within the sociology of religion Therefore, the study does not enter include into a discussion with all the many studies of Danish history that could be touched upon

Acknowledgements The chapters of this book have been written over a number of years and

before the rise of the Islamic State and the tragic attack in Paris on November 13 2016 After these murders, this work sadly seems even more relevant, since one of the main issues that the book argues is that the academic studies of religion should pay more attention to the relations between religions as well as the relations between state and religion

Since the book has been written over a number of years, earlier versions of some arguments have appeared in the following publications: Reeh 2006 : Religion and the state of Denmark - state

1 Introduction

religious politics in the elementary school system from 1721 to 1975, an alternative approach to

secularization Unpublished Ph.D.-dissertation, University of Copenhagen; Reeh 2009a :

“American civil religion as state-mythology” published in Holy nations and global identities: civil

religion , nationalism, and globalisation , ed A Hvithamar, M Warburg and B A Jacobsen

Published by Brill Academic Publishers; Reeh 2009b : “Towards a new approach to secularization:

religion, education and the state in Denmark, 1721–1900” in Social Compass 56(2): 179–188

published by Sage; Reeh: 2009c “Ideas and state subjectivity in history, the introduction of the

equestrian schools in 1720 and the confi rmation in 1736” in Ideas in History ; Reeh 2011 :“A

shin-ning city on another hill: Danish civil religion as state mythology” in Social Compass 58(2):

235–246 published by Sage; Reeh 2013a :“A relational approach to the study of religious survival

units” in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 25 published by Koninklijke Brill NV and

Reeh 2013b : “Danish State policy on the teaching of religion from 1900 to 2007” published in

Social Compass 60(2): 236–250 I am grateful for the permission to expand on these earlier

ver-sions of my work

Over the years, my work has been funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research and the Carlsberg Foundation I am very grateful for this support With regards to the content, this book has benefi tted from comments, assistance and advice from many individual persons The point of departure for the study at hand was a Ph.D thesis at the Department of History of Religions at the University of Copenhagen I would like to thank Margit Warburg who most importantly was my Ph.D supervisor and to whom I am greatly indebted I am grateful to Thomas Højrup for providing

me with a radical different theoretical outlook without which this book could not have been written and who has been a stimulating critic as well as a friend, throughout the years The same goes for James Beckford who was a member of the assessment committee at my Ph.D defence and who since have remained a friend and provided me with invaluable advice and recommendations I would like to thank Danielle Allen, Joan Scott and Didier Fassin who gave me the amazing oppor- tunity of spending a full year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton Furthermore, I am greatly indebted to Catharina Raudvere who invited me to partake in her Carlsberg funded research

project Many Roads in Modernity , which provided an opportunity to continue my work and to be

part of a stimulating research group in which we had many fruitful and inspiring discussions I would also like to express my gratitude towards the editors of the book, namely Lene Kühle, Lori Beaman and Anna Halahoff for their encouragements, patience and constructive editorial advice Various pieces of the book have been presented in different settings over the years and a number of individuals who in different ways have given me advice, comments or simply been good col- leagues In particular, I would like to thank Peter J Katzenstein, Peter Beyer, Christian Meyer, Jesper Eckhardt Larsen, Ingrid Markussen, Erik Reenberg Sand, Annika Hvithamar, Jørgen Podemann Sørensen, Tove Tybjerg, Peter Westergaard, Morten Warmind, Laura Feldt, Lars Kjær Bruun, Morten Thomsen Højsgaard, Mikael Rothstein, Mogens Pelt, Abdullah Simsek, Trine Stauning Willert, Zlatko Jovanovic, Kristian Frisk, Mads Damgaard, Andreas Baumann and Erik Sporon Fiedler Finally, I would like to thank my wife Tine Reeh for her support and encourage- ment throughout the years

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Part I

Theory

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016

N Reeh, Secularization Revisited – Teaching of Religion and the State of

Denmark, Boundaries of Religious Freedom: Regulating Religion in Diverse

Societies 5, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-39608-8_2

The Blind Spots of the Dominant

Secularization Theories

As has already been mentioned, the classic secularization paradigm ( Tschannen

1991 ) was quite unprepared for the re-emergence of religion on the political agenda

in the years around 2001 In the following, the conceptual basis of secularization theory in the sociological works of Auguste Comte , Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber is outlined The reason for this is that the early formation of sociology as well

as the notion of secularization itself has had a series of unintended consequences on the study of secularization even today This is the case in regard to the two main problems that this book uncovers in the conceptual structure of the previously domi-nant secularization paradigm, namely, (1) the lack of attention to the state and its external relations and (2) the lack of attention to the dynamic relations between religions However, this is not to say that neither modern nor classic sociology paid

no attention to these two points at all Max Weber did, and even his main legacy to secularization theory, namely, Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus , departed from the different economic performance of Catholics and

Protestants, which was important for mutual relations between the two religious groups ( Weber 1904 ) The point is that despite such instances, the framework of secularization theory neglects both the importance of relations between religions as well as the importance of state agency Further, the argument here is that the reason for the shortcomings of secularization theory can be found in its basic conceptual structure The causes of the problems of secularization theory around 2001 are thus rooted in the foundation of sociology as an academic discipline in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Thus, the inherent problems in the secularization par-adigm outlined in this book may also be prevalent in other areas of sociology

The history of the concept of secularization is well known and has been enumerated many times (Hadden 1987 ; Casanova 1994 ; Swatos and Christiano 1999 ; Gorski and Altinordu 2008 ) Notwithstanding this fact, the problems inherent in the con-cept have not often been realized to their full extent

The Latin word saeculum is the root of the concept of secularization and means

age, century, and world More important in the context of this book is that the word

saecularizatio was used in the canon law of the Middle Ages ( Casanova 1994 ; Gorski and Altinordu 2008 ) Saecularizatio made sense in the medieval world in

which there was two offi cially recognized distinct spheres or domains: one astical and one secular Different rules and laws applied to the two spheres If, for instance, a crime were committed in a church or a monastery, the accused would be tried in a different court under different laws, namely, canon law, than if he commit-ted the same crime in a marketplace However, a transfer from one domain to the

ecclesi-other was possible, and this transition was denoted by the word secularizatio , which

thus referred to the transfer of things and entities (as persons or property) from the ecclesiastical domain to the secular domain It may thus be called a transitional concept in that it describes the transition between the ecclesiastical and the secular spheres

It should also be noted that the Medieval world-view was founded and mized by the existence of another distinction, namely, the distinction between this world, or earth, and the other world, or heaven As such, the world-view consisted

legiti-of a dualistic system legiti-of classifi cation ( Casanova 1994 )

The transformation to which the concept secularizatio refers is thus a transition

between the offi cially recognized domains of the Holy Roman Empire What is

more important, and a point to which I return, is that there is only one religion in this

conceptual outlook, which enables the distinction between the two spheres If there had been different religions within the Roman Empire at this point, a conceptual outlook according to which there were two distinct spheres within its realm would thus most likely not have been possible

The situation of a religious monopoly did not, of course, last The Reformation split Europe into different Christian confessions, and the walls of the monasteries were demolished in the Protestant states, to paraphrase Weber This was, however, not an attempt at secularizing the state in the modern sense of the word Rather, the Reformation was an explicit and ambitious attempt to subject the entire state to religious governance, especially in the Nordic countries where a Protestant religious monopoly was established In these countries, the Reformation can be seen as an attempt to fulfi l a premise of monotheism , namely, that the entire life of man becomes subject to the will of God ( Assmann 2007 )

The Reformation in Europe and the consequent splintering of the Medieval

world did not mean that the notion of secularizatio went out of use In the aftermath

of the 30 Years’ War and during the negotiations that led to the Peace Treaty of

2 The Blind Spots of the Dominant Secularization Theories

Westphalia in 1648, the notion secularizatio was used when land was transferred or

expropriated from the Papacy to the European states

In the historical process of the nineteenth century, a general process of tization was initiated in most European countries In this process, the law became equally applied to all the citizens In this context, it is worth asking how a transfor-mational concept such as secularization could make sense, since it implied the transformation from a religious sphere to a non-religious sphere The conceptual result was that rather than being a translation of an object from one sphere to another, secularization became a transformation of society itself In this sense, the concept

democra-of secularization is an expression democra-of the fact that society became an object for itself and that the religious sphere came to be projected into the past and the less religious sphere became projected into the present or the future It is at this point that the modern concept of secularization emerges; however, as is well known, the meaning-fulness of the concept in this sense is crucially dependent on the defi nition of reli-gion If the concept of secularization is to make sense at all, it must be accompanied

by a concept of religion that is defi ned as something that can decrease (i.e., a stance) As we will see, a substantial analysis of man’s social life is not unproblem-atic ( Emirbayer 1997 )

sub-2.2 Comte’s Framing of Sociology and Break

with the Natural Law Tradition

In 1822, Auguste Comte published his Plan des travaux scientifi ques nécessaires

pour réorganiser la société As the title suggests, the overall aim of Comte’s work

was political His goal was the creation of a new society, and Comte thought that this could not be accomplished before the scientifi c endeavour was placed on a new footing A central tenet in his thinking was the ‘law of the three phases’ According

to this, the thought of man passes through three phases, namely, theological, physical, and scientifi c (Comte 1975 , 72–73)

According to Comte, the positive phase had only been achieved in what we today call the natural sciences , but the other sciences should be developed along the lines

set out by Bacon In addition to the existing sciences , Comte envisioned a physique

sociale or sociologie , as he called it The positive approach of Comte and his

follow-ers such as Durkheim was crucial with regard to the conceptualization of Comte’s sociology (Comte 1975 , 263) Comte made a full break with the previous natural law tradition, claiming that it was a metaphysical fancy and made the new science

of sociology subordinate to biology (Comte 1975 , 254) The entire natural law tion of Grotius, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and the rest did not need

tradi-to be taken intradi-to account Not only did Comte establish this break with previous discourse on social matters, he also held the utopian view that it would be possible

to create an entire new society

In contrast to the French sociological tradition, it should be noted that Herbert Spencer established a concept of sociology that uses the organic metaphor more consistently ( Spencer 1967 , 70) Spencer’s conceptual structure entailed that exter-nal relationships with other hostile societies was indispensable This was implied in his organic metaphor because of the importance of the external relationship in the organic world as, for instance, between the hunter and the hunted This metaphor thus entails that a society adapts to the presence of other specifi c societies in its environment These parts of the organic metaphor were, however, consigned to oblivion for analytical purposes, presumably because of the two World Wars and even more so because of the link between Social Darwinism and the Nazism of the Third Reich

If we return to the sociology of Comte it should be mentioned that the military and theological power were interconnected and the military had been dependent on theological power for its legitimacy (Comte 1975 , 296) The decline of theological power became a prerequisite for the rise of positive philosophy and the advent of Comte’s new society (Comte 1975 , 290) For Comte, then, the decline of religious belief, or what was later to be called secularization, was a political necessity if his new positive society was to be realized

It may, of course be inferred that this is of little interest today and to the nant secularization theories of the twentieth century However, here it is contended that since secularization theories, like the greater part of sociology, was primarily founded on the functionalist and positivistic conceptualization of society, some ver-sion of a secularization theory is almost by necessity implicit in the Comtean frame-work of society Further, it is argued here that the Comtean framework has been crucial in the development of the secularization theories of Durkheim and beyond

domi-2 The Blind Spots of the Dominant Secularization Theories

2.3 Consequences of Emile Durkheim’s Foundation

of the Discipline of Sociology

As we have seen in the case of Auguste Comte , breaking with the earlier tradition of social thought was also a crucial part of the work of Emile Durkheim This can be seen in his invocations of himself as an heir to Bacon’s break with the idealism and metaphysics of the medieval scholastic tradition in the natural sciences (Durkheim

1938 , 62) In addition, Durkheim sought to distance himself from his sociological predecessors by claiming the works of Comte and Spencer to be ‘positivistic meta-physics’ (Durkheim 1938 ) As with Comte, the previous discourse of social thought need not be taken into account on methodological grounds Durkheim did, however, engage with Herbert Spencer in particular, with the result that Durkheim’s The Division of Labor in Society was heralded as having defi nitively superseded Spencer ( Parsons 1937 ) The dominance of Durkheim within sociology was furthered by Talcott Parsons, who pronounced Spencer dead after World War II ( Parsons 1937 ) The result of this reception was that Durkheim’s The Division of Labor in Society became perhaps the centrepiece of sociological thinking on structural differentia-tion within the sociological tradition (Rueschemeyer 1982) In Durkheim, the domain of sociology comes to be defi ned as only a limited group of phenomena, namely, the social facts, which, in turn, are defi ned as:

A social fact is every way of acting, fi xed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general throughout a given soci- ety, while at the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual manifesta- tions This close connection between life and structure, organ and function may be easily proved in sociology … (Durkheim 1938 , 13)

Essentially, Durkheim conceptualizes any society as consisting of a set of organs, which taken together comprise that society The basic analytical fi gure is that soci-ety is an independent entity consisting of its parts However, by his methodological approach, and by defi ning the very discipline of sociology in this way, Durkheim seems to lose sight of the importance of external relations He thus takes only the internal working of a society into consideration, despite having Spencer’s concep-tual framework in front of him As in the case of Comte, war is a phenomenon of the past For Durkheim, the reason is:

The national will merges with the human ideal Each state will have its aim not to expand

or to lengthen its borders, but to set its own house in order and to make the widest appeal to its members for a moral life on an ever higher level All discrepancy between national and human morals would be excluded (Durkheim 1957 , 74)

Although countless attempts at alterations or refi nements have been made, the whelming bulk of sociology has retained a fundamental part of the model that Durkheim put forward Durkheim’s sociology considers itself to be an independent science or study, with its own delimited domain If the aim is to establish sociology

over-as an independent discipline, claiming authorization and recognition from the state, this may be a wise strategy While that may be, the following argues that the

conception of society as an independent domain is one of the most important roots

of recent problems, and perhaps even fallacy, of secularization theory Until the recent emergence of globalisation studies, sociology has generally not asked the following question: is there anything outside the conceptual framework of a society that infl uences it? There is surely room for the proposition that it is unsatisfactory to maintain the conceptualization of society as an independent domain More specifi -cally, I suggest that the agency of the state should be taken into account in greater measure Of course, one may argue that the state is subsumed under the concept of society The important point, however, is that such a conceptualization often over-looks the fact that a state interferes in, controls, and regulates its society according

to its interests vis-à-vis other states These interests are not derived from the viduals in that society; instead, a state must ensure its survival in a world of other potentially hostile and certainly competitive states

indi-2.4 The German Approach to Sociology and Talcott Parson’s Transformation of Max Weber’s Sociology

The origin of German sociology proper can be said to be Ludwig Gumplowicz’

Grundriss der Soziologie ( 1885 ) and Ferdinand Tönnies ’ Gemeinschaft und

Gesellschaft ( 1887 ) Unlike Spencer and Comte, early German sociology were mulated in a much closer dialogue with the natural law tradition One of Tönnies’ works was, for instance, on a classic work from the tradition of natural law, namely,

Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan ( Tönnies 2001 , ix, 1) In his works, Tönnies fully ognizes the state as an active force in history The state was, however, not necessar-ily to be dealt with in the same analysis, or by sociology Tönnies was thus an example of one crucial difference between French and German sociology of the late nineteenth century, namely, that German sociology in general did not regard itself

rec-as a hegemonic enterprise vis-à-vis neighbouring disciplines such rec-as economics and political science Instead, sociology was regarded by Tönnies and others as a sci-ence to be supplemented by the fi ndings of its academic sisters This also applies to Max Weber Scholars of the secularization theories of the twentieth century often ascribe great importance to the works of Weber (Parsons 1954 ; Tschannen 1991 ; Casanova 1994 , 45; Bruce 2002 ) While Weber did not develop his own theory of

secularization as such, his work, especially Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist

des Kapitalismus , has been read as a secularization narrative and has served as

fer-tile inspiration for the theories of secularization (Hughey 1979 ; Tschannen 1991 ; Bruce 2002 ) Max Weber was a highly complex scholar and his career and move-ment within the academic landscape signifi cantly infl uenced the reception of his contribution to modern secularization studies Background on Weber’s academic carrier is thus to some extent necessary if one is to understand the transformation of Weber’s thinking on secularization that occurred from the 1904 edition of Die

2 The Blind Spots of the Dominant Secularization Theories

protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus to Talcott Parson’s English

edition in 1930 (Weber 1904 , 1930 )

Weber was trained as a jurist but moved on to economics when he was appointed

as professor in Freiburg in 1894 Within the economic-scientifi c fi eld, he became involved in the so-called Methodenstreit that raged inside the discipline, especially

in Germany in the late nineteenth century (Swedberg 1998 ; Kilpinen 2004 ) After a personal crisis that followed the death of his father and eventually led to his resigna-tion from his post in 1903, he became head of the Institute for Sociology at the

University in Munich in 1919 Die protestantische Ethik , which he published in

1904–1905, can be interpreted as an economic ( Berger 1969 ; Swedberg 1998 ) as well as a sociological work (Parsons 1954 ; Bruce 2002 )

Weber was a part of the German historical school of economics and held the belief that economic developments are infl uenced not only by economic factors but also by other factors, for instance, religion and culture In this respect, the German historical school opposed, on one hand, the position of the Austrian economic school and, on the other hand, the position of the Marxian economic school The key argument of Weber against the Austrian school was that cultural and economic factors also have an important infl uence on the modern economy He thus regarded the emergence of capitalism as a long, gradual process stretching over several cen-turies and held that the infl uence of reformed Protestantism was only one contribu-tor among several others, including the emergence of the modern state, modern technology and the evolution of the shareholder corporation (Swedberg 1998 , 7) This is evident from a series of lectures he gave in 1897 titled ‘The Course of Economic Development’ (Swedberg 1998 , 9) Although Weber regarded the modern economic sphere as a sphere with its own autonomy, this autonomy was not detached

but instead interacted with other spheres of nineteenth- century society His Die protestantische Ethik of 1904–1905 can be seen as an auxiliary study of his overall

project of establishing an expanded historical approach to the study of the economy Thus, it may be important for sociologists to remember that Weber originally wrote

Die protestantische Ethik as a professor of economics in the midst of the

Methodenstreit in the Austrian economic school However, the Methodenstreit was

not just a theoretical discussion on economic; as economic discussions most often

do, it had implications in politics In the editions of Die protestantische Ethik of

1904–1905 and 1920, Weber began by sketching the problem in the following way:

A glance at the occupational statistics of any country of mixed religious composition brings

to light with remarkable frequency a situation which has several times provoked discussion

in the Catholic press and literature, and in Catholic congresses in Germany, namely, the fact that business leaders and owners of capital, as well as the higher grades of skilled labour, and even more the higher technically and commercially trained personnel of modern enter- prises, are overwhelmingly Protestant (Weber 1930 , 3)

In his introduction, Weber departed from the tensions between Protestants and Catholics and not least the Catholic perception of what today might be called dis-crimination Martin Riesebrodt has argued that the fi rst edition fi rstly addressed the major publications of Werner Sombart, Eberhard Gothein, Georg Jellinek, and Georg Simmel; secondly, provided a political assessment of capitalism; and thirdly,

dealt with his own personal crisis ( Riesebrodt 2005 ).Weber later republished Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus in the fi rst volume of

Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie in 1920 There, it was given a new

foreword intended for the entire series of volumes This foreword was included in

the English edition of Die protestantische Ethik as translated by Talcott Parsons

(Weber 1930 ) Martin Riesebrodt has thus correctly argued that in the 1920 edition,

the fi rst part of Gesammelte Aufsätze was framed differently from the earlier edition

( Riesebrodt 2005 ) This is also true for Parsons’ translation into English In contrast

to Parsons’ assurance that nothing had been added to the original text, the new

intro-duction to Gesammelte Aufsätze transformed the scope of the original work in a

signifi cant way (Weber 1920 ) In the English edition, Weber wrote:

A PRODUCT of modern European civilization, studying any problem of universal history ,

is bound to ask himself to what combination of circumstances the fact should be attributed that in Western civilization, and in Western civilization only, cultural phenomena have

appeared which (as we think) lie in a line of development having universal signifi cance and

value

Only in the West does science exist to a stage of development, which we to-day nize as valid Organization of political and social groups in feudal classes have been com- mon But even the feudal state of rex et regnum in the Western sense has only been known

recog-to our culture In fact, the State itself, in the sense of a political association with a rational, written constitution, rationally ordained law, and an administration bound to rational rules

or laws, … is known, … only in the Occident, despite all other approaches to it

And the same is true of the most fateful force in our modern life, capitalism… (Weber

1930 , 13–17)

In that light, the book became a scientifi c self-refl ection on the Western experience and more specifi cally on the rise of Western hegemony vis-à-vis the rest of the world 1 In the foreword to the Gesammelte Aufsätze , Weber moves on from econom- ics and the specifi c context of the Methodenstreit to universal history, a term he explicitly employs, as seen above With this shift, his Protestantische Ethik made a

tremendous leap in scope The original 1904–1905 edition was a historically cifi c investigation whereas the new foreword of 1920 and the English edition that followed contained a general postulate concerning general processes in the Western world, showing that the confi guration of social relations in this world had been transformed in the great process of modernization It is from Parsons’ English edi-tion that Weber’s thoughts and ideas about secularization have exerted their infl u-ence, including the concepts of modernization, rationalization, and bureaucratization Further, the English edition also seems to have been the main impetus for Brian Wilson’s concept of societalization (Wilson 1976 , 259–276) The compilation and

spe-especially the foreword of The Protestant Ethic recontextualized the articles nally published during the Methodenstreit into the fi eld that Weber himself called

origi-universal history The sociology of Weber thus became a much more generalized approach that was closer to the sociology of Emile Durkheim than his own earlier

1 Weber shared this overall engagement with the British evolutionists, for instance, Edward Tylor

and Herbert Spencer To this extent, Weber’s Protestant Ethic is a reaction to the twentieth -century

European experience

2 The Blind Spots of the Dominant Secularization Theories

specifi c historical-sociological investigations Within the framework of universal history especially, Weber’s concept of rationalization could be used to supplement Durkheim’s concept of differentiation, and both concepts lent themselves to postu-lating the existence of general and universal processes, which revolutionized societ-ies experiencing the grand process of so- called modernization ( Bruce 2002 )

2.5 Consequences of the Concept of Differentiation

As the preceding analysis of the work of Comte and Durkheim shows, the key

ele-ment par excellence in their analysis and description of the modern world, in

con-trast to the old world, is the concept of differentiation It is the division of labour or,

in Weber’s case, the rationalization that sets the modern world apart from the tional world On the conceptual level, the reason for this is that the concept of secu-larization has been reformulated as transformation through time

The concept of differentiation has remained basic to the secularization theories

of the twentieth century In his now almost classic book, Public Religions in the

Modern World , José Casanova stated:

the core and central thesis of the theory of secularization is the conceptualization of the process of societal modernization as a process of functional differentiation and emancipa- tion of the secular spheres - primarily the state, the economy, and science - from the reli- gious sphere and the concomitant differentiation and specialization of religion within its own newly found religious sphere ( Casanova 1994 , 21)

From this point, Casanova went on to distinguish the main thesis from two sub- theses, namely, (1) decline of religion and (2) privatization With respect to the core

or central thesis of the theories of secularization, Casanova’s main fi nding is that functional differentiation is indeed a valid proposition However, with regard to the two sub-theses, he argued that neither the decline of religious belief nor the privati-zation of religion can be sustained as modern structural trends:

the decline of religious beliefs and practices is manifestly not a modern structural trend, although it is very clearly a dominant historical trend in many modern Western, particular European, societies ( Casanova 1994 , 213)

He goes on further to say:

privatization is not a modern structural trend but, rather, a historical option To be sure, it seems to be a modern ‘preferred option,’ but it is an option nonetheless ( Casanova 1994 , 215)

The main fi nding of Casanova’s study is thus that public religions can exist in the modern world without being at odds with the functionally differentiated and demo-cratic modern society ( Casanova 1994 ) In addition, Casanova argued that secular-ization on the macro-level can facilitate desecularization on the meso-level ( Casanova 1994 ) He is, of course, not alone in stressing the role of differentiation

as the dominant concept in the secularization theories In different ways, this

concept plays a key role in twentieth-century secularization theories such as those

of Peter L Berger, Talcott Parsons , Karel Dobbelaere, Roy Wallis, Bryan Wilson, Steve Bruce, and others The concept of differentiation thus informs much of our sociological thinking about society, including religion The use of the concept of differentiation has several implicit consequences First and foremost, the concept presupposes there is a kind of whole entity that can be split into parts This whole entity is, of course, society, the construction of which in classical sociology is out-lined above 2 The theories of Comte, Durkheim, Spencer, Weber, and Tönnies do not enquire into the necessary conditions for the existence of a society The theories

of secularization, as well as sociology in general, seem to imply the existence of any society as a given The question is if the consequence hereof is that the society is analysed as if it is independent of factors outside itself such as the international state system

2.6 The Implicit Notion of Religion in the Concept

of Differentiation

In addition to the conceptual problems enumerated above, the notion of tion as differentiation has consequences in regard to the manner in which religion is viewed One diffi culty is that the notion of differentiation implies that religion is an integral part of the whole of society The problem here is that the religious part of a society with a religious monopoly, for instance, the Danish Lutheran Church before the introduction of religious freedom in 1849, is qualitatively different from the religious part of a society that embraces more than one religion In the fi rst case, the church is an arm of the state whereas in a pluralistic society with religious freedom, religions compete with one another, as Stark, Finke, and others have argued ( Finke

seculariza-1990 ; Finke and Stark 1992 ) Although these scholars have made this point in a rather economistic way that better fi ts the US than Europe and have rightly been criticised for this ( Bruce 2002 ), I contend that Stark and Finke are correct in main-taining that the two situations are different

One problem with the employment of the concept of differentiation is that it leaves no room for religious agency, for instance, vis-à-vis the state and vis-à-vis other religions Secularization is thus conceived as a process that divides and com-partmentalizes different spheres of the society However, if we turn to Jose

Casanova’s neoclassic Public Religions in the Modern World , it is rather striking

that he, on one hand, employs the concept of differentiation:

Concerning the fi rst thesis, that of secularization as differentiation, it is a central claim of this study that this remains the valid core of the theory of secularization The differentiation and emancipation of the secular spheres from religious institutions and norms remains a general modern structural trend Religion itself is constrained not only to accept the modern principle of structural differentiation of the secular spheres but also to follow the

2 Or, in Weber’s, case groupings of individuals

2 The Blind Spots of the Dominant Secularization Theories

same dynamic and to develop an autonomous differentiated sphere of its own ( Casanova

Conceptually speaking, the notion of differentiation implies that society is viewed

as a whole that is divided into spheres Yet at the same time, the religious component

is capable of resisting or accepting the process of structural differentiation While this may seem to be splitting hairs, this inconsistency points to an unexplained prob-lem, namely, how a religion can resist or accept anything In other words, the agency

of the religion must be brought to the light if we are to understand the dynamic of the so-called process of secularization

The following argues that Casanova’s language in the last quotation is revealing

in that it exposes a critical fl aw in the analysis of the dynamic behind religious change , namely, the religious agency

2.7 On the Absence of War in Sociology

In the Comtean and Durkheimian sociology, individuals were united into a family through affection and not through considerations concerning utility, as in the theo-ries of the social contract ( Comte 1975 ) The family unit becomes the building block of society, and it follows that society becomes an organism or a system con-sisting of a set of elements, namely, families ( Comte 1975 ) In contrast to the family, society is an association of affective units or families This part of Comte seems to

be the conceptual origin of Durkheim’s integration of society, more specifi cally, the concept of solidarity

For Comte ( and Durkheim), the function of government is to prevent dispersion

in order to regulate the parts and ensure the function of the whole, which, in the new industrial society, is devoted to the advantage of man This is in contrast with the old regimes, which were devoted to military conquest In other words, Comte’s modern society had itself as its end The consequence hereof is that modern society could be studied in itself as if it were an isolated entity If, on the other hand, modern society had been regarded as dependent on its environment, it would have been necessary to take this environment into account

One question one may ask is whether or not other disciplines such as tional relations are able to recognize this kind of government within their actual experience of international politics In other words, do the actual states behave in such a way as Comte envisioned in his utopian third phase of man?

In contrast to the notion of society as an entity that can be studied in itself or in isolation, I argue that a society cannot exist if it is not in some way defended ( Elias

1978 ; Giddens 1985 ; Foucault 2003 ; Højrup 2003 ; Kaspersen 2002 ) A quick glance

at world history strongly suggests that a society without some kind of defence has never existed The reason for this is, of course, that if a society does not have a suf-

fi cient defence that can in some way repel threats from its neighbours, in the long run, it will be taken over and absorbed into a stronger state In other words, a society needs and must rely on a defensive unit or, to use modern terminology, a state This may be seen as trivial, but, in effect, the overwhelming bulk of sociology has neglected the far-ranging impacts of defensive measures on other areas of society This is visible on many levels First, sociologists have paid little attention to the military establishment and its social impact on the rest of society (Joas 2003 ) Second, and perhaps more signifi cantly, violence and war are regarded as anomalies (Joas 2003 )

My contention is that if and when a state is threatened it will adjust to that threat Carl Schmitt’s notion of the importance of the state of exception, which is a key analytical point of departure in his work, should thus be taken into account (Schmitt

2007 ) Norbert Elias’ notion of the survival unit allows us to consider the tive of the state in the analysis Unfortunately, war and confl ict are not matters per-taining only to the past and hence sociology must take them into account somewhat more by asking itself whether war is part of the normal world rather than an excep-tion (Joas 2003 )

The question I approach here is if the consequence of this is that a society cannot

be analysed as an entity independent from the state in which it is situated Social analysis thus cannot begin with society as such but must also take the state into account simply because the state and its concerns infl uence society in so many ways

2.8 Blind Spots of Classic Secularization Theories

The classic sociological theories of Comte, Tönnies , Spencer, and Durkheim all consider the concept of society as the analytical master concept The same can be

said of Weber’s analysis in The Protestant Ethic

The writings of Comte and Durkheim share several features that were crucial for the development of the sociological discipline in the twentieth century First and foremost, both attempted a clean break with the traditions of previous social thought This break was facilitated through the doctrine of positivism or empiricism, which entailed that their non-empiricist predecessors did not need to be taken into account

In this way, both Comte and Durkheim adhered to the fundamental ideology of the republic, namely, that society controls the state and not vice versa This is especially visible in the writings of Comte, who posited a clear distinction between the old militaristic regime and the new regime The new society was to be united under the purpose of being to the advantage of man The same concept is present in the writ-ings of Emile Durkheim, where the needs of society are purely internal The relation

2 The Blind Spots of the Dominant Secularization Theories

between a society and other societies, let alone a state and other states, is not considered

Weber’s legacy in secularization theory is found almost exclusively in The

Protestant Ethic , especially in the transformation of the work that occurred when the new foreword was added to the edition in the fi rst volume of Gesammelte

Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie and, perhaps more importantly, in Talcott Parson’s

English translation of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism ( Weber

1930 ) These texts had a universal historical bent and could be used to claim that Western societies had undergone a broad process of rationalization, a conclusion that dovetailed nicely with Durkheim’s claim that those same societies had under-gone a broad process of differentiation Read in this light, Weber’s work can be fi t-ted to Durkheim’s and could serve to describe the modernization of the West Although Weber paid some attention to the state, especially in his political works,

the state played an important role in neither The Protestant Ethic nor in the works

inspired by it ( Berger and Luckmann 1967 ; Berger 1969 ; Wilson 1976 ; Bruce 2002 ; Dobbelaere 2002 )

In addition to observing that the dominant sociological secularization theories have neglected the state, I also point out above that the dominant secularization theories have neglected the dynamic relationship between religions The Durkheimian tradition of the sociology of religion was founded on the analysis of a society tolerating a single religion Consequently, the theoretical concepts do not take into account the possible dynamic between two or more religions The same

critique can be raised against the use of Weber’s work in secularization theory

However, Weber was aware of the fact that religions relate to each other, which can

be seen from the fact that the point of departure of The Protestant Ethic was the

ten-sions between Protestants and Catholics over the different economic achievements

of the members of the two religions This insight was mostly forgotten after Weber

In regard to the case study in this book, the last point about the relations between religions is detectable in Denmark, especially following the immigration of Muslims after the 1960s Further, secularization theories have suffered from being too gen-eral, and most have considered religion akin to a substance that may be present in a greater or lesser degree in any given society A conceptual reason for this may be that the concept of secularization is transformational When the medieval world’s two offi cially recognized spheres of sovereignty were collapsed into one as the European states gradually gained the upper hand vis-à-vis the Pope, the concept of secularization changed its meaning and ceased to signify a transfer from the reli-gious to the secular sphere Instead, the concept began to signify a change of society itself, namely, a transformation from a society with a great deal of religion to a society with less religion It seems inescapable that the dominant secularization theories have not considered the dynamic relation between religions themselves and that religions can take on new and different forms, which can be diffi cult to capture with a traditional institutionally oriented concept of religion

The main thrust of the conceptual analysis has been that the basic sociological concepts have (1) neglected the state agency and the external relations of the state and (2) conceptualized a society as a self-contained entity with only one religion

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N Reeh, Secularization Revisited – Teaching of Religion and the State of

Denmark, Boundaries of Religious Freedom: Regulating Religion in Diverse

along the axis of time The original notion of secularizatio was thus reconfi gured

At the same time, religion was conceptualized as a substance of which there could

be more or less Religion became a substantial category that was measured in logical surveys as belief, religious participation, and membership ( Bruce 2002 ; Dobbelaere 2002 ) Perhaps it should be stressed at this point that it is not my inten-tion to argue that no religious change has taken place since 1700 Change has cer-tainly taken place My intention is to show that the sociological study of religious change in this period may have been inhibited by the conceptual framework within which sociological studies of secularization have been carried out As is well known, the measurement of secularization is extremely dependent on the defi nition of reli-gion Historically, the category of Atheism has served to limit the boundary of reli-gion In the following, I present a new theory of religion and argue that organized Humanism and Atheism are in fact part of the fi eld of religions I do not use the term non-religion to cover the new Atheism and Humanism as suggested by some

An earlier version of this Chapter has previously been published as Reeh 2013a “A relational

approach to the study of religious survival units” in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 25

( http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/15700682-12341261 ) The Chapter is published with kind permission from by Koninklijke Brill NV